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"This is your father's?" he asked. The notion made him slightly uncomfortable, quite aside from considerations of Martha getting him clothes.

"No, it's yours.Now it's yours."

"I suggested to Miss Martha, Captain," Evans said, "that you and Mr. Alex were just about the same size, and all his clothes were here, just waiting to feed the moths."

"So we checked, and Evans was right, and all we had to do was take the trousers in a half inch, and an inch off the jacket sleeves, and of course find your policeman's buttons. Evans knows this marvelous Italian tailor on Chestnut Street, so all you have to do is say 'Thank you, Evans.' "

"Allof those clothes?" Pekach said, pointing to the wardrobe.

"Mr. Alex always dressed very well," Evans said.

Captain David Pekach came very close to sayingOh, shit,I don't want your father's goddamn clothes.

But he didn't. He saw a look of genuine pleasure at having done something nice on Evans's face, and then he looked at Martha and saw how happy her eyes were.

"Thank you, Evans," Captain Pekach said.

"My pleasure, Captain. I'm just glad the sizes worked out; that you were just a little smaller than Mr. Alex, rather than the other way around."

"It worked out fine, thank you, Evans."

Evans smiled and left the room.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with you," Pekach said to Martha.

She met his eyes and smiled. "Oh, you'll think of something."

Martha walked to where Evans had left the beer, poured some skillfully in the glass, and handed it to Pekach.

"I love it when I can do something nice for you, my Precious," she said.

He kissed her gently, tasting her lipstick.

"I better take a shower," he said.

She came into the bathroom, as she often did, and watched him shave. She had told him she liked to do that, to feel his cheeks when he had just finished shaving.

When they went downstairs, Evans had brought her Mercedes coupe around to the portico from the garage, and was holding the door open for her. Pekach got behind the wheel and glanced at her to make sure she had her seat belt fastened. There was a flash of thigh and of the lace at the hem of her black slip.

For a woman who didn't know the first fucking thing about sex, he thought for perhaps the fiftieth time, she really knows how to pick underwear that turns me on.

He put the Mercedes in gear, drove down the drive to Glengarry Lane, and idly decided that the best route downtown would be the Schuylkill Expressway.

Just north of the Zoological Gardens, Martha asked if they had caught whoever had shot the policeman.

"No. And we don't have a clue," Pekach said. "Just before I came

… to your place"-he'd almost said "home"- "we had a meeting, and Tony Harris, who's running the job, and is a damn good cop, said all he knows to do is go back over what he already has."

"You almost said 'home,' " Martha said, "didn't you?"

He looked at her and was surprised to find they were holding hands.

"Slip of the tongue," he said.

"Nice slip, I like it."

"You too."